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Of course, O’Reilly is totally incorrect about the law. The decorum of the capital building was violated exactly the same by the atheist sign as the creche. The establishment clause of the 1st amendment requires that any speech being permitted by the State in the capital building needs to be vetted under a premise other than religion.

This is exactly what should have happened: the only rational way to uphold the establishment clause is to prevent all religious speech promoted by the State. Why? Because there are BILLIONS of religious viewpoints and not enough room to hold them.

This is exactly what happened here.

Poor Megyn Kelly. O’Reilly set her up disrespectfully by calling her misguided, and in a previous encounter he called her a “cookie” or something. He has been misinformed by whomever he got his information from; but it’s important to keep in mind that the State shouldn’t be respecting any establisment of religion over any other. That means all or nothing.

The important distinction here is that although it is not actually a religion, it is legally treated as a religion.

There are some problems with this, particularly that everyone who doesn’t have a religion is grouped together even if they have very different beliefs, but overall it is probably a good thing because it provides at least some protection for nonbelievers in situations where religions are given special treatment.

I wonder if Bill would consider it a religion under other circumstances though, if he thought it served his purposes (like many of the street preachers seem to)…

Fortunately, in this context, to be religious speech the speaker or the speech need not be directly religious. It is counted as religious speech here because it is a criticism of the religious speech already in play. In fact the sign promoted by the atheist group is doing an excellent job of bridging the establishment clause and the freedom of expression. The creche is religious speech being potentially promoted by the State; the sign is a criticism of the creche by criticizing religion in general.

The content of the message is just as important as the message itself.

This is why the Festivus pole must also be allowed. That’s a parody of the religious speech; which also makes it a form of criticism of the initial display. And therefore religious speech because it is speaking about religion and the establishment thereof.

Can of worms doesn’t adequately cover what happened. Too often religious groups feel like they should control the speech of the government, pleading for special dispensation; when they discover that dispensation actually covers everyone, especially critics, they freak out.

See the send-home-pamphlets campaign in the Albemarle County, Virginia public schools.

Separation of church and state is the practical application of the establishment clause primarily for this reason. We do not need to be giving each other bloody noses because we want to use a monopoly on speech via the government’s guns!